Trial of leading Bahraini activist postponed: rights group

RIYADH (Reuters) – A Bahraini court again denied bail to a leading Bahraini human rights activist on Tuesday and delayed his trial on charges of spreading false news, a pro-opposition rights group reported.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said Nabeel Rajab’s trial was postponed to June 12, extending his period of pre-trial detention – much of which was spent in solitary confinement – to roughly a year.

Authorities at Bahrain’s information affairs office could not immediately be reached for comment on the case.

Rajab, a leading figure in a 2011 pro-democracy uprising, was arrested last June after tweets from his account suggested that security forces had tortured detainees in a Bahraini prison and on a military campaign in Yemen.

He faces two other sets of charges related to an op-ed he published in the New York Times last year and tweets from his account that were critical of the Saudi-led Gulf Arab intervention in Yemen.